Tamara Steckler, Legal Aid attorney, holds a photo of one of her clients wearing restraints.

By Martha T. Moore, USA TODAY

NEW YORK  Three years after a 15-year-old boy died in restraints, the youth prison where he was pinned to the floor is set to be closed.

The shuttering of Tryon Boys Residential Center is due to budget gaps that plague states across the USA — but also is a sign of the intense pressure on New York to improve its deeply troubled juvenile detention system.

In August, a U.S. Department of Justice investigation found that the state uses excessive force on youths in custody; the federal department says it will sue the state if changes are not made. In December, a state-appointed task force said use of force and lack of mental health care are acute problems for the 1,600 children held in New York's juvenile facilities each year. Two weeks later, the Legal Aid Society sued the state Office of Children and Family Services (OCFS) on behalf of youths in custody.

Federal investigators found youths in four facilities, including Tryon, were routinely pinned to the ground and handcuffed for infractions as minor as laughing loudly, sneaking a cookie or refusing to get out of bed. The restraints caused concussions, broken teeth and broken bones.

"At this point, it's pretty clear that the change needs to happen, it needs to be pervasive and it needs to happen now," says Legal Aid Society lawyer Tamara Steckler.

In his budget proposal last month, Gov. David Paterson, a Democrat, announced plans to close two facilities named by the Justice Department. That includes Tryon, where Darryl Thompson died in November 2006. In the incident, cited in the federal investigation, aides pinned him facedown and handcuffed him after he repeatedly asked for recreation time.

The economic crunch is forcing New York, like other states, to scrutinize a system that costs it $210,000 per child annually.

"One of the great ironies is that the economic crisis may be accomplishing what advocates like me have been saying for 30 years," says Mark Soler of the Center for Children's Law and Policy, an advocacy group. "It's just too expensive to lock up the kids."

New York's juvenile system, which has 31 residential facilities, is one of the nation's largest, even though New York is one of only two states that charge youths 16 or older as adults. More than half of youths in detention are there because of misdemeanors. More than 80% are black or Hispanic.

The reports and lawsuit have "focused public attention on an area of the juvenile justice system that has gone without scrutiny for years," says Jeremy Travis, head of the task force Paterson formed in 2008.

Common problems

Since 2000, the Justice Department has conducted at least 11 investigations into juvenile facilities in states including California, Indiana, Ohio, Maryland and Oklahoma. Its findings illustrate that the same problems persist: overreliance on physical restraint and insufficient mental health services.

A bill before the U.S. Senate would require states to track the use of restraints in juvenile detention, which some states do voluntarily.

"The research tells us unequivocally" restraint "can result in a child's death," says Tara Andrews of the Coalition for Juvenile Justice, which is lobbying for the bill's passage.

Without reporting requirements, "very often abusive situations do not come to light," Soler says. Though some kids need to be incarcerated "so they don't hurt other people and don't hurt themselves," he says, use of restraints is "excessive."

Other states that have come under federal investigation, including Louisiana, have adopted practices pioneered in Missouri. There, the juvenile system converted to small facilities more like treatment centers than prisons, focused on counseling and stopped the use of restraints. Only 8.6% of youths released from custody are recommitted within three years, the Missouri Department of Youth Services says. In New York, the figure is 45%, the task force says.

"In looking at the national picture, the old model is under serious change," Travis says. "You have places like New York saying, we want to follow (Missouri's) lead and recognizing we're very much stuck in an old corrective punitive model."

'No tolerance'

One of the severest critics of New York's juvenile system is in charge of it. "I don't think that, objectively, anybody who looks at our system and systems across the country can say we are really doing a good job," says Gladys Carrion, OCFS commissioner.

Carrion, appointed in 2007, has installed video cameras in juvenile facilities and reinstituted the office of the ombudsman, which inspects youth prisons. She requires staff to track the use of restraints.

"I personally get a weekly report," she says. "We have no tolerance for this." The harsh reports, she says, are "levers for change."

Carrion has been criticized by juvenile prison employees, who say the facilities are understaffed, they haven't received necessary training, and the agency risks public safety by closing facilities without having adequate community-based programs to accommodate youths.

"You can't just simply do this by fiat, say we're going to have a different model and have it happen," says Stephen Madarasz of the Civil Service Employee Association, which represents youth prison staff.

Travis, the task force head, is "optimistic that there will be some pretty significant change, but it will take a decade," he says. "It took a decade in Missouri; it'll take a decade in New York."

Legal Aid's Steckler says Carrion has made progress, but not enough. "The video cameras and the data reporting has decreased restraints, but it obviously hasn't stopped them." What's needed, she says, is to end the notion that youths in custody are prisoners. "Until that shift occurs ... we're still talking about grown men restraining children."

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